Dog-friendly travel makes pets' tails wag in anticipation

Holly Ocasio Rizzo

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, March 29, 2003

With vacation signup sheets flying around offices, it's time to think about where to take Fido this year for a little rejuvenation. I'm not talking about checking him into the pet inn; I mean traveling as companions. But how do you know which luxury hotels welcome guests who can't brush off the dog hairs on their shoulders? How do you know which sights you can enjoy together, or where you two can dine together?

Guardians of cats, birds, fish, snakes, gerbils and other difficult travelers never face such dilemmas. But surely dog people, who often have personalities as outgoing as their canine pals', have sorted it all out.

To help my dog friends bring home great travel tales -- my two feline housemates prefer that I stay home with them -- I sign on and search.

pet etiquette, products and a bulletin board. Ordinarily I avoid membership sites, but this is one of the finer dog-travel places on the Web because it's so doggone easy to navigate. Membership costs $4.95 a month or $14.95 a year, payable online by credit card through a secure service.

-- Ease of navigation: From the home page, roll your mouse down the left- hand menu and click on your choice. You'll be taken to a page with further choices in pull-down menus and hyperlinks; the navigation bar moves to the top of the screen. All the pages load quickly even though they're packed with graphics.

-- What you'll find: The home page feasts the eyes on a canine photo montage with jewel-tone color overlays. The accommodations list goes by U.S. state and Canadian province; it includes hotels, motels, resorts and bed-and- breakfast inns. The destinations list covers major resorts; general camping information, such as how to load a dog pack, and dog-friendly campgrounds; links to state parks departments; and an e-mail link for requesting information not on the site. The transportation area links to individual airlines and private transport services.

-- The best part: The "barking board" offers high potential for exchanging travel tips with other dog people. However, it appears to be lightly used -- but it also dates back only to September, the end of travel season in much of the United States and Canada. We'll keep our paws crossed that traffic picks up.

-- Thumbs down: The destinations area is disappointingly spare. Dog owners know they can camp, and the site makes it easy to link to state parks information, but inquiring minds want to know esoterica, such as where it's OK to shop with dogs.

RELATED SITES

"Traveling With Your Pet" details regulations and practical tips for transporting companion animals on airlines and other shippers. It includes contact information for regional offices, such as the one in Sacramento, and a direct e-mail link for asking questions.

-- www.petswelcome.com; Petswelcome.com. "Need to find your way around without suffering through our adolescent humor and Byzantine navigation system?" When a "how to use this site" page offers this introduction, jump for it. The slow-loading pages -- some as long as two minutes on dial-up service --

pay off with information about pet-friendly lodgings off the beaten path in the United States and Canada. Extra-special: "Traveler's Choice," where pet guardians comment on places where they've stayed, and a search-by-route feature where you plug in your destination for driving directions to Fido- loving lodgings along your route. As always, though, check by calling before showing up on the doorstep.

-- www.interpetexplorer.com; InterPet Explorer. A search function at the top of the site invites users to plug in the city or state. When I tried this for Camp Verde, Ariz., nothing came up. By using the state name only, I found some place just down the road in Sedona. The site also lists pet sitters, dog parks and veterinarians, and includes information irrelevant to travel, such as profiles of dog and cat breeds.

-- www.dogfriendly.com, DogFriendly.com. Lodgings and dog-friendly restaurants throughout the United States and Canada can be found here. Dog events are listed by city, not chronologically, so you'll have to scroll through them to see what to put on your itinerary. Special attraction: an etiquette guide for canine travelers.